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Thursday, February 23, 2012

THE LOST WORKS OF MARS RAVELO

(And Some Excerpts
of His Unpublished Interviews)

My first personal encounter with Mars
Ravelo happened in the early 1980s, when I started contributing crossword
puzzles and articles to different Atlas Publishing magazines. I was a working
student, freelancing, mostly in making crossword puzzles and writing trivia
articles for Sports weekly, Special People and MOD Filipina. I only knew Mars Ravelo from the komiks stories that
I used to follow and admire as a kid. When I saw him talking to the editors at
the MOD office I didn’t have the guts to introduce myself to him.

The first issue of Sixteen, the magazine founded by Mars
Ravelo.

The first issue of Sixteen
MOD Filipina,

December 6, 1974

Note: Mars
Ravelo was one of the “Founding Fathers” of MOD. He was the one who brainchild
the Pilipino Komiks Incorporated’s Sixteen Magazine (June 22, 1968, with
Orlando R. Nadres as its first editor). Later, under Atlas Publishing, Ravelo’s
Sixteen eventually expanded to the large-sized Sixteen MOD Filipina (December
6, 1974), then to MOD Filipina (October 10, 1975), and finally to the MOD
title (July 3, 1992). It is also interesting to note that MOD’s earliest
ancestors were written in Tagalog and later in Taglish before English became
its permanent medium.

In 1985, I was finally introduced by
then MOD Filipina magazine editor-in-chief Ernestina “Ernie” Evora Sioco
to Marcial “Mars” Ravelo (1916-1988), the “Dean of Filipino Komiks Writer” and
“Father of Filipino Komiks Superheroes.” I was asked by Mrs. Sioco to interview
Mr. Ravelo. Between the years 1985 to 1987, I had several meetings with Mr.
Ravelo. We talked a lot. Uncle Mars was one of two persons (the other is Mr.
Antonio Tenorio) who taught me how to conceptualize and write komiks scripts. His style
of komiks script writing was very elaborate and descriptive. Illustrators like
this because it makes their jobs easier. I’m proud to say that I’m lucky to
have been mentored by Mars Ravelo and learned his style of komiks writing.

TWO
INTERVIEWS WITH THE MAESTRO OF KOMIKS

A
tribute article in the “Starliners” section

of
MOD Filipina September 23, 1988
issue,

written
by editor-in-chief Ernie Evora Sioco.

Published
11 days after the death

of
Mars Ravelo.

I did two interviews with “Uncle Mars”
as he was fondly called by the people around him. Both of the interviews
revolved around many things from comparing politics of old to politics of the
1980s, to komiks and the different komiks characters he created, most
especially the superheroes. The interviews were done in Pilipino; one inside
the office of Mr. Antonio Tenorio, then Atlas Publication’s head of Komiks
Department, in the old Atlas Compound in Roces Avenue, and the second in a Savory
Restaurant together with his wife Lucy and Mrs. Sioco. He was around 70 years
old, but aside from what he called “a few moments of lapses” he was still quite
sharp on his wits. We were even planning to do a komiks project together. He
asked me to create 4 or 5 superheroes and they will join his team of
superheroes and create a group much like Marvel’s
Avengers and DC’s Justice League. We
already had a name for the group: Royal League (“R” for Ravelo and “L” for
Lawagan), and Tagalized, Ligang Maharlika
(again, “L” for Lawagan” and “M” for Mars). To this, Mrs. Sioco gave her thumbs
up. Uncle Mars, however, died on September 1988 before the project even got to
first base. ﻿﻿

Mars Ravelo’s creations: From

top left clockwise, Darna at ang

Babaeng Lawin, Dyesebel,

Captain Barbell Kontra Captain Bakal,

Latikman, Booma, Goro & Bondying.

(From Tagalog
Klasiks #424,

April
14, 1967.

For the Ravelo interviews, they were
not published in MOD Filipina even
after his death because Mrs. Sioco was thinking of starting a Pilipino-language
magazine. But when Gintong Mariposa was established in 1992, I misplaced
the envelope where the cassette tapes and typewritten notes of the interview
(the result of my family’s transferring from one house to another). It was only
about three years after, around mid-1995, that I was able to recover it. Sadly,
during those times, I was “blacklisted” by Atlas Publishing “for writing in
other magazines” like Celebrity World,
Mr. & Ms., etc. The General
Manager, Mr. Deo Alvarez, said it was MOD’s policy that its contributor should
not write for rival publication. Heck, I wasn’t even allowed to enter the Atlas
Compound to get my paycheck. Luckily, I had some inside help from Mrs. Sioco
and Mr. Tenorio, who tacitly called on the Atlas Compound gate guards to let me
in. Incidentally, it was also during those times that I had secured a “go
signal” from Tita Lucy to push the project that Uncle Mars and I were planning.
It was to Atlas Publishing’s lost that the project didn’t materialize because
of petty misunderstanding. Mr. Tenorio was very much regretful about it.﻿﻿

Mars Ravelo’s comics/cartoon characters:

(from
left) Rita, Ipe at Engot, Totit, Gorio at Tekla, and Varga.

For the backdrop of the interview, I
did some research and background profiling of Ravelo, and noted that he was the
creator of many of the unforgettable characters in Philippine pop culture: Rita,
Trudis Liit, Roberta, Si Gorio at Si Tekla, Maruja,
Facifica Falayfay, Bondying, Dyesebel, among others. His
komiks dramas like Basahang Ginto and Tubog sa Ginto were
literally acclaimed as cinematic gold. His superhero characters like Darna,
Captain Barbell and Lastikman were also immortalized in films and television
series.

Today, after comparing my notes with
what I was able to gather about Uncle Mars in the Internet, it dawned on me
that what he revealed to me in the interviews were valuable information unknown
to most people.

PONCHONG
AND BEMBOY

Mars Ravelo’s Bemboy published

in a 1939 Mabuhay
Extra issue.

(courtesy
of Jose Dennis Villegas’ blog)

Do you know for example that Ravelo’s
first published works came out around mid-1938 when he was still a struggling
22-year-old cartoonist? But if you browse through the Internet and a couple of
very “shallow” komiks history books, you would read that Rita (Kasinghot),
published in Bulaklak magazine in 1947, is tagged as the first published
komiks creation of Ravelo. That’s nine years off the mark!

In my interviews, Ravelo revealed that
“sa abot ng natatandaan ko” (as far as I can remember), his first published
works were “Ponchong” and “Bemboy.” And had not Liwayway magazine turned
him down on his Varga (Darna’s predecessor character), history would have put
Darna’s origin inside Liwayway’s pages instead of Bulaklak, and
she would have been the Philippines’ first komiks superhero (Yes, at least
one-a-half years ahead of Wonder Woman's first comics appearance!).

For two years since rediscovering the
text of the interviews, I spent part of my spare time trying to find remnants
of Ravelo’s lost works. I scoured libraries and my collector-friends’ bauls
for naught. It was only in 2011 that I got lucky. I found “Bemboy” courtesy of
komiks collector and archiver Jose Dennis Villegas’ blog.

According to Mr. Villegas, he acquired
the very rare find, a 1939 Mabuhay Extra magazine containing Ravelo’s
komiks strip “Bemboy,” from an antique dealer. Since then I also scoured even
junk shops for Ravelo’s lost works, expecting to be lucky one of these days and
perhaps find his other lost work, “Ponchong.”

Both Bemboy and Ponchong, like many of
the Ravelo-created characters including Narda (Varga/Darna alter-ego),
Bondying, Penitente Mumolingot or better known as Tenteng (Captain Barbell’s
first alter-ego), Tony (of “Tiny Tony”), etc., were names of his childhood
acquaintances.

Ponchong & Bemboy, the first two

published characters created by

Mars
Ravelo (around 1938-1939).

Ravelo also told me that the two
persons that influenced him early in his career were Irish cartoonist George
McManus (1884-1954) and Jewish-American animator Max Fleischer (1883-1972).
McManus’ cartoon strips “Rosie’s Beau,” “Bringing Up Father,” and “The Newly
Weds, influenced him so much both in his style of writing and drawing. The
character Ponchong he said was a Filipino version of Jiggs, the character in
“Bringing Up Father” that brought McManus to fame and fortune. The komiks
strips “Totit,” “Ipe,” “Buhay Pilipino,” “Si Gorio at Si Tekla” and “Rita at
Okay” were reminiscent of McManus’ style.

﻿﻿

Two of George McManus’ works: “Snookums” and “Bringing
Up Father.”

Look at the similarity of McManus’ and Ravelo’s style of
drawing cartoons

about
everyday family situations.According to Ravelo, the character Ponchong was the Filipino personification of Jiggs.

For the character Bemboy (I earlier
thought it was “Bimboy” until I saw the comic strip discovered by Villegas), he
recalled having a playmate who argued with his mother a lot because he put so
much attention to his dog that he always neglect to do his home chores. It so
happened that Fleischer created a character named “Bimbo,” the dog with a human
girlfriend, which is “Betty Boop” (the character that immortalized Fleischer).
Come to think of it, Bemboy is quite similar to McManus' Snookums. Ravelo sort of experimented during his early works, intermixing the real story
with fiction, and also interspersing the drawing styles of McManus and
Fleischer with his own.

Varga is another casing point of
Ravelo’s early style of drawing. True to his accounts, Varga’s illustration is
a cross between McManus and Fleischer. And based on his story, the timeline of
Varga’s birth origin should be put around 1939 and not 1947.

THE
(UN)LOST STARTING POINT OF DARNA

Ravelo admitted that when he was in
his early youth, he was quite gregarious and talkative. He loves telling his
stories to both his Filipino and American friends and acquaintances. When he
first saw Superman from a newspaper comics strip brought by American soldiers,
he so loved it that he boasted he would create a female counterpart in Philippine
komiks.

Many in the komiks world know that
before Darna, there was Varga. But did you know that Varga was actually the
second name. When Ravelo was telling his “Superman female counterpart” story, the
name he was calling her was “Suprema,” which is the female equivalent of a
“Supremo” (highest rank leader), a nom de
guerre of Andres Bonifacio. Ravelo intended Suprema to be an all-powerful
and indestructible woman just like Superman. When asked, “why not just call her
Superwoman?” Ravelo answered, “Ayaw ko kasi siyang parang ginaya lang. Naisip
ko, para maging naiiba siya.” (I don’t like her to appear like a copycat. I
thought, to make her different.). Ravelo didn’t want to bootleg the character
he so admired. “Naisip ko ring gumamit ng pang-uring tatatak sa isip ng tao.
Naisip ko ang salitang ‘kamangha-mangha.’ Kaya ang itinawag ko sa kaniya ay Suprema – ang kamangha-manghang
dilag.” (I also thought of using an adjective that will be retained in the
minds of people. I thought of the word ‘wonder.’ So I called her Suprema – the wonder woman.)

Ravelo had a change of mind, however,
and opted not to use the name Suprema. Ravelo changed the name to Varga. From
his nickname “Mars” (also the name of the Greek god of war and the fourth
planet from the sun) and its Tagalog equivalent “Marte,” he purportedly used as
Varga’s homeworld. So, the Philippines’ first superheroine was born – “Varga,
ang Kamangha-manghang Dilag mula sa Planetang Marte” (Varga, the Wonder Woman
from the Planet Mars).

It can also be noted that Varga was a
character archived twice. It was first published inside the pages of Bulaklak magazine Vol. 4 Number 17 on
July 23, 1947. Varga became very popular with the readers, but by some twist of
circumstance, the name Varga became the ownership of Bulaklak magazine
(during those times, intellectual property right is not yet in effect) and when
Ravelo left the publication in 1949 after a falling out with its editor, Varga
stayed behind. Ravelo took Varga’s personality, revised her costume, and
brought her to Pilipino Komiks, and renamed the character Darna.

For more than two decades the
character Varga was lost, until Ravelo established his own RAR Publishing House
in 1970 and later acquired the rights to publish Bulaklak. He retitled it Bulaklak
at Paruparo, and inside its pages, Varga returned and completed her story.
It was followed by “Varga at ang Impakta,” which was illustrated by Jess
Olivares. The resurrected Varga, however, didn’t have much flare like its
successor-characterization Darna.

It took three decades again before the name Varga resurfaced, when ABS-CBN Channel 2 made
it into a TV series which started on August 2, 2008. The character portrayed by
Mariel Rodriguez, however, was very different from the original creation of
Ravelo. The superheroine’s costume was change, as well as her origin and
beginning. The name of her alter ego was also change – from Narda to Olga.
(READ ALSO: THE UNTOLD TRUE BEGINNING OF DARNA)

The ABS-CBN series
portrayed an alien princess named Vara from the planet Vargon who found herself
drawn to planet Earth. Gifted with beauty, voluptuous body and superpower, Vara
met and merged with a young Filipina girl named Olga (played by Angel Sy), and
became Varga. Together they tried to fight evil and save the world. Varga’s
archenemy in the series is Xandra (played by Sheryl Cruz), a woman who can
literally sucked the youth out of every human.

There were so many which can be
considered as lost works of Ravelo. While they are listed among his resumes,
many of his works are now considered rarities or, worst, no longer have
existing copies. Do you know for instance that aside from “Varga” and “Rita”
there was another character – “Ric Benson” – that Ravelo wrote and drew for Bulaklak in 1947? Ric Benson was published 16 issues ahead of Varga.Before Iskul Bukol’’s Miss
Tapia, there was already “Miss Tilapia.” Before Jinkee Pacquiao was even born,
Ravelo already have a character named “Jinkee.” Truly, sad to say, much of the
priceless legacies left by this legendary komiks great maybe lost forever.

Now, anyone of you heard about
“Boksingera?” How about “Ang Biyenang Hindi Tumatawa?” Can you find me an existing copy of the “Baby Bubut” komiks
series? Ah yes, how about “Zorina,” “Kitikiti,” or “Nakangiting Halimaw?”

Two komiks novels written by Mars Ravelo.

On the left, an inside page) from Redondo Komix #23, March 10, 1964 (courtesy of Stephen Redondo):

“Devlin, Swashbuckler of the Seas” (illustrated by
Nestor Redondo)

On the right, an inside page from Espesyal Komiks #269, January 28, 1963:

Three of many komiks novels written by Mars Ravelo under the penname Virgo Villa:

“Asuwang” on the cover of Extra Komiks #253 (May 1, 1961),

“Botong” on the cover of Universal Komiks #80 (April 7, 1967),

and “Tsangga Rangga” on the cover of Espesyal Komiks #338 (May 6, 1967).

Let us not forget that because Ravelo
was such a prolific writer, he needs to write under pennames so as not to
overwhelm both the publication and the reading public. There are several works
he did under the penname Virgo Villa: “Asuwang,” “Bamaw,” “Botong,” “Gorgonya,”
“Kanggo,” “Oggra, ang Kapreng Tanga,” "The Adventures of Rex Braganza,” “Tsangga
Rangga,” to name a few. As of this updated posting (May, 2017), they are also
not yet listed in Wikipedia.

You mentioned "the timeline of Varga should be put around 1939." I presume you mean conceptualization. When exactly was Varga conceptualized in 1939? I mean what month? January? April? September? Thanks.